I don't believe in a clean future. Enjoy and love it while it lasts, care for your environment on an individual basis, but don't expect the world to drop profiteering and go for 'clean.' People will learn the hard way. Either - everyone expects that 'something' to happen during their life-time and it does not OR everyone knows it's coming but no one thought it would come so soon, etc.

We'll all live in a post-apolcalyptic world sooner or later...what's a little bit of fallout, eh?

It’s pretty funny how we are so strict in the US and Europe on air pollution. But the leading car manufactures like GM and Volkswagen sell cars in china and other parts around the world that don’t even hold up to our automobile emissions standards of the 80’s. Right now the cars sold in china are only required to meet European Union's Euro II emissions standards. This sounds pretty fancy but is a decade behind. Right now Europe is level III. This car buying explosion in china is building thick smog in china that is actually so plentiful, that it manages to come across the pacific to California and other parts of the west coast of the United States. Most likely these trends will not change, since the world runs on money, and being environmentally safe just cuts down on big corporations profits. So this statement that in about 45 yrs that ground telescopes will be useless, it most likely going to be a reality.